From Lake Manitoc to Burkitsville
by frozen-delight
Summary: Sam and Dean on the road: glimpses of their first six months back together. [S1 drabbles written by canonisrelative and frozen-delight.]
1. Dead in the Water

**Title: **From Lake Manitoc to Burkitsville  
**Authors: **frozen_delight and canonisrelative  
**Rating:** Teen and Up Audiences  
**Fandom:** Supernatural  
**Characters:** Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester  
**Category: **Missing scene/episode coda fic  
**Warnings: **None  
**Word count:** ~ 8100 words  
**Status: **Complete

**Summary:** Sam and Dean on the road: glimpses of their first six months back together.

**A/N: **These drabbles for the episodes _Dead in the Water_, _Skin_, _Bugs_, _Home_, _Asylum_ and _Scarecrow_ grew out of emails we sent each other as we were watching Supernatural for the first time. After watching all 9 seasons we dug them up, dusted them off, and were pleased to find they still rang true, although there are obviously some slight discordances to later seasons' canon. Sam's POV is written by canonisrelative, Dean's by frozen_delight.

* * *

_Chapter Summary: After they rescue Lucas, Sam and Dean put Lake Manitoc in their rearview mirror for the second time in as many days, and Sam asks a question that's been on his mind._

Sam

Sam feels like he's holding his breath 'til they pass – for real this time – the sign for 43 North to Milwaukee. When they get on the freeway he lets out a sigh that lasts forever, emptying his lungs, letting it all go. Dean looks over at him with an indulgent smile like he's expecting to see him slumped against the window, half asleep. Instead Sam keeps his eyes trained on his brother, trying to work something out. Dean's own laughing eyes are bright points gleaming in the darkness.

"What?" Dean asks.

Sam gives half a grin and shakes his head, looks away.

"Come on, Sam. What?"

Sam laughs, still looking out the window. "Nothing. Just. What is it with you and damaged chicks, huh Dean?"

Dean's foot weighs heavy on the pedal and he guides them in a graceful arc around a too slow semi, not bothering to return the bird the trucker flips his way. Sam does it for him, anyway, smirking and waving as they leave the John Deer cap in the Impala's dust.

"You got something to say, Sammy?"

Sam turns on that _who me_ look that he knows drives Dean crazy, brushing away the hair falling into his eyes. "I just mean, first that Haley girl, now Andrea?"

"What?" Dean asks again, glaring at him. "She kissed _me_. I didn't do anything."

"Right," Sam rolls his eyes and turns back to the window.

In the reflection Sam can see his brother watching him, catches the way he keeps taking his eyes off the road to look at him like he's waiting for Sam to go on or like he's got something to say himself, but after a minute Dean only flexes his hand against the steering wheel and returns his attention to the road.

Dean

It's dark and Dean can feel Sam staring at him. Probably it should weird him out but it doesn't. Sam's always been looking for him, at him, up to him, all his life, and Dean was stupid enough to take it for granted, forever and always. Well, tough luck. It's something Dean missed during those ugly last years. He also missed having no one to look after. Or out for. That was his job after all.

In the midst of the surge of happiness at having this back, Dean's thoughts trail back to Lucas. The poor kid never had any of that. No wonder he went plumb loco.

"What?" Dean asks eventually when Sam won't stop staring. Because even though it's not really driving him crazy, he's got certain stellar big brother standards to uphold – in this case, to muster up a touch of annoyance.

Sam just grins and shakes his head, the infuriating brat. "Come on, Sam. What?"

Not looking at him like the cheeky coward he is, his little brother says, "Nothing. Just. What is it with you and damaged chicks, huh Dean?"

In the next minute, Dean expertly navigates the car and what he considers a bitchy conversation about why all the girls they save from wendigos or vengeful spirits would rather kiss him than Sam. To be honest, Dean's already forgotten all about Haley, but, yeah, now he remembers that she kissed him before they left. It was sweet. Definitely one of the perks of working on a job other than watching out for Sammy and Dean's ready to make the most of it. But that doesn't mean Sam gets to call him out on it.

Once he's done his fair share of glaring at Sam for starting the stupid topic, making even more stupid insinuations and looking pleased as punch as he does so, Dean reminds himself that he could easily conjure up a whole list of reasons why girls might pick him over his younger brother without Dean even having to try, his staggeringly good looks featuring on it very prominently. But before he can share this with Sam and wipe that perky grin right off his face, Dean again remembers Lucas, sitting on the park bench, drawing super strange psycho pictures, a lonely nerd. The poor kid never had someone to compare to, for better or worse.

His eyes softening, Dean glances at Sam before turning his attention back to the road. _At least you never had to paint wacky pictures because you had no one to talk to_, he thinks and he wants to tell Sam, _See, it wasn't really so bad with us, right?_ But he won't. Not just yet.

Sam

Sam watches Dean, watches his face relax and his eyes go soft, introspective, as he purses his lips, his whole bearing turning thoughtful as he keeps his eyes on the road, looking forward, thinking back.

Watching Dean, everything about his brother so familiar, his body language broadcasting on a frequency Sam's been tuned to his whole life, Sam thinks it's not fair or right that just looking at his brother should feel so much like stepping back in time, like these last few years may as well have been a dream. Because he's changed, since the days when he split his time between watching Dean and watching the world fly by out the passenger side window. He's changed, and it would be easy to say that Dean hasn't. Easy, but not entirely true, not the whole picture anyway. The devil's in the details, as they say, and what were their lives woven from if not a hundred thousand tiny details that Sam used to know as easy as breathing, as easy as salting the windows every night before he even knew why. But as they go on, as days become weeks and still nothing on Dad and nothing on Jessica's killer, he's finding more and more threads that seem just a little out of place, things that aren't quite where he was expecting them to be. He's not sure which is the more startling; the things that have changed or the things that should have but haven't.

Sam's grown up since he last sat here, watching Dean. And maybe, a little bit, for all he acts like he hasn't, Dean's grown up too. Sam thinks about Lucas, about how Dean was with him, drawing him out when even his own mom hadn't gotten through to him and Sam feels a wave of guilt for what he'd just called her. _Damaged._ Sam has to look away from Dean for a minute because Dean always knows when Sam's watching him and Sam doesn't know, yet, if that's one of the details that's changed or if Dean can still read him like an open book. _What is it with you and damaged chicks?_ She'd just lost her husband. He of all people should know just how hard she must be fighting every day, just to keep going, keep her head above water.

Thinking about Jess hurts as bad now as it did in the beginning, but it's a different kind of hurt. The kind with a little distance to put into perspective just how much he's lost. Because Sam knows if he's changed for the better at all since the last time he sat in this car, he knows if he's grown up, it's because of her. He'd found the person he wanted to grow up for. Grow old with. And he can't think like that so he anchors himself on Dean again, sneaking glances at him and wondering what Dean would be like, if he had that. If the only girls to kiss him weren't the damaged, the grieving, the grateful. In a day, Lucas had gone from silent and scared to laughing and loud. Andrea had smiled at Dean, had kissed him and held her head up, ready to move on with her life. Dean has that effect on people and Sam wonders, watching Dean's steady hands on the wheel, what effect the right person might have on Dean.


	2. Skin

_Chapter Summary: They leave St. Louis in the dust after a shapeshifter wearing Dean's face accuses Sam of abandoning his family. In the car, Sam makes a confession, and a promise._

Sam

If he's being honest, the fact that he's been gone from Stanford for weeks and hasn't thought to check his email 'til now bothers him. Luckily there's no one present to be honest for, seeing as his brother probably doesn't realize it's even possible to check one's email from one's PalmPilot. Are they living in the future or the past, that's one question Sam just doesn't know how to answer as he reads messages from friends across the country while they drive towards a monster no one's heard of or seen in a couple centuries.

But the slew of messages that greets him as he finally logs in takes him aback and he can hardly put meaning to the words Dean's chattering in his ear while he reads words on the screen that come from a hundred miles and as many years away.

And he remembers that he was going to be a lawyer.

He remembers that he believes there are ways to put the world right that don't revolve around holy water and silver bullets.

Oh. Yeah.

Dean

"Sorry."

The word seems to come out of nowhere.

A minute ago, Sam has startled up from sleep. Another one of those nightmares. He's been quiet, ignored Dean's glances, just bit his lip thoughtfully. And all of a sudden that one word.

"No need to apologize. Though it might help if you'd just talk to me, man," Dean murmurs, his eyes once again wandering away from the road ahead and latching themselves on to Sam.

"It's not what you think."

"No? Well, I'm not a college geek, but, dude, I'm not blind. I hate all that talking crap as much as you, believe me, but it seems like you need it, so…"

"It wasn't about Jessica this time."

There's something in the way Sam's voice goes all hushed by the end of the sentence that makes Dean wonder if it's wise to continue the conversation. Like he said, he hates all that talking crap. He keeps his eyes firmly trained on the road.

"It was about you. Well, about the shapeshifter. What he said…"

Dean decides to go for nonchalant. "I was there too, you know. Heard him alright."

"Yeah. Well… I'm sorry. That you never had the chance to – just… _go_, like me."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Huh. No problem, man."

He can feel Sam looking at him with that slightly pleading expression he's always had, all his life, looking up to Dean, no matter if he wanted to play with Dean's toy soldiers, if he was trying to learn how to ride a bike or if he was asking _Where's Dad?_ All his life, everything in Dean has always answered to that expression, as if by default.

He clenches his jaw and stares ahead.

"You sure?" Sam asks hesitantly. "You're not – jealous? I'd understand, you know. In your place I would be, I guess…"

Dean does look sideways this time. He cocks his head slightly and allows his lips to do the wild little dance that's such a central part of his superior-older-brother-no-chick-flick-moments-act.

Too bad it doesn't deceive Sam even for a second. In turn, Sam's jaw moves in his defiantly eloquent version of _Don't give me that jive_. Dean really should have stressed his authority a little harder back when they were young.

And there's that pleading expression again. Damn.

"Like I said, Sammy, I'm a freak," Dean offers, since speaking seems inevitable. "Hunting monsters, being on the road with my baby," here he fondly strokes the steering wheel, "and good music – that's my idea of life."

Sam doesn't say anything. Waits for more. He's patient and sly; he knows that in the long run Dean will never deny him.

After a while, Dean adds, "I just don't want to live it alone."

"Well, looks like you won't have to," Sam says quietly.

It's the closest thing to promise he'll ever get, Dean knows, and he's determined to take it at face value for now.

So Dean can't help himself. He risks a glance to the side and sees his little brother grin broadly, his face shining the way it did when they were both still kids and Dean thought that nothing would ever separate them.

Because he feels an answering smile blossoming at the corners of his own mouth, Dean hastily looks back at the road, turns up the music and starts drumming away on his steering wheel in accompaniment. And who the hell cares if his heart is drumming along in a rhythm of its own?

Sam

That thing hadn't just stolen Dean's skin, it'd taken on Dean's essence. It felt and smelled like his brother; he'd seen it walk, sweat and breathe like his brother.

He'd known it wasn't his brother immediately. Hooray, kudos and brownie points to Sherlock Winchester, he knows how to recognize a shifter, but that's hardly the point, is it?

Would he have pulled the trigger?

The dream is as real as the dreams of Jessica. He knows it's a dream but he can't stop it. He's standing, a gun in each hand, a clear bead on the shapeshifter. Not-Dean is walking towards him, speaking calmly, exasperated, his brother's voice exactly. His brother's body unquestionably. Sam trains both guns on the shifter's heart, his fingers slick on the triggers.

"You got to go to college," Not-Dean says. "He had to stay home. I mean, _I_ had to stay home. You got the frat boy life... I'm still a townie."

"You can't hurt him," Sam says, victory swelling in his chest, feeling god-like because he knows the outcome and in his dream he gets to make the rules. "He's alive as long as you're borrowing him, you can't hurt him while you're in his skin."

"Hurt him?" The shifter is suddenly in front of him, on top of him, pinning him to the floor. His brother's eyes have never burned into him with so much rage, so much hate and desire. "I don't need to hurt _him._"

Sam startles awake, stifling a yelp. The memory of it begins to fade immediately, he's halfway forgotten it until he looks over and the eyes of his nightmare are looking back at him. He flinches back against the window, rubbing his face. And the word slips out without his permission.

"Sorry."

"No need to apologize," his brother says. Sam gives a short nod and turns to look out the window. Another hour 'til twilight sets in. He keeps his eyes trained on the gathering gloom as Dean goes on, mumbling like he wouldn't mind if Sam pretended not to hear him. "Though it might help if you'd just talk to me, man."

Sam gives a half smile and shakes his head. "It's not what you think."

"No?" Dean snorts. "Well, I'm not a college geek, but, dude, I'm not blind. I hate all that talking crap as much as you, believe me, but it seems like you need it, so _–_"

"It wasn't about Jessica this time." Sam interrupts. He looks at Dean, the hard angles of him, tensed like he's ready for a fight when all he's doing is gripping the wheel of his beloved car and steering them towards God-knows-what. Dean, who thought he knew everything. Crazy Dean, who didn't know the half of it but who'd be there, steady as a rock, even if he did. "It was about you. Well, about the shapeshifter. What he said…"

Dean flexes his hand against the wheel and glances in the side mirror. Then he shrugs. "I was there too, you know. Heard him alright."

Sam blows out his breath. "Yeah." And if he hadn't been, what then? If Dean hadn't heard every word, would Sam still feel this urge, this desperate need to mention it, to acknowledge it, to get Dean to say it was all right and acquit him? "Well… I'm sorry. That you never had the chance to – just… _go_, like me."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Huh. No problem, man."

Sam's eyebrows rise up into his hairline then slam back down. He knows that tone... or thinks he does. Memories of long nights spent pinching each other awake waiting for Dad to get home don't just vanish over a simple _Sorry._ "You sure? You're not – jealous? I'd understand, you know." And he would. God, he so would. It would almost be a relief, to hash this out with Dean, hear Dean's voice – his _own_ voice, not that stupid skin-job's flawless imitation – tell him he was a jerk and an asshole and a failure as a brother for what he'd done. It must be some kind of sick masochistic impulse that prods him along, makes him prompt, "In your place, I would be, I guess…"

Dean finally looks straight at him. His face moves through that dance Sam knows so well but has never put adequate words to. What does Dean see when he looks at him like this… stupid kid brother he can't shake off? Friend who's let him down a few too many times to trust? Or something else that Sam will never quite know how to name.

"Like I said, Sammy, I'm a freak."

Sam's not sure what he wants more, to tell him _It's '__Sam' _or to yell _It wasn't _you_ who said that it was that __freak_, and before he can make up his mind, Dean's talking again. "Hunting monsters, being on the road with my baby–" And Sam thinks for a wild half-second that Dean means _him,_ his baby brother, before Dean's lifting his hand and stroking the Impala's wheel. "And good music. That's my idea of life."

_Dad needed me. Where the _hell_ were you._

He wants to tell Dean how he wouldn't give a crap about Dad, not really, not if he weren't missing. He wants to tell Dean that not a day had gone by at Stanford that he didn't think about Dad and Dean out there without him, didn't weigh his decision and second-guess himself. All of that would make a nice speech, if any of it was more than half true. He keeps his eyes on Dean, searching through the cluttered caverns of his brain, searching for a truth that wasn't too terrible. But nothing comes. No words, anyway, just a warm feeling in his belly as he watches Dean, just the feeling of finally getting to relax because someone else was keeping an eye on him.

His visions of what life would hold for him – school, work, a career, a family of his own – have been fading quickly, even as everything in Dean's world comes rushing back to him. For all he'd tried to drown out the past in facts and figures backed by good sense and hard evidence, _real world crap_ as Dean called it, the instincts were still there along with all the knowledge Dad crammed into his head before he lost him to the _real world._ Maybe that memory of his, the one that earned him his 174 on the LSAT, is good for more than party tricks. Since getting back with Dean, he'd saved their lives more times that he could count on one hand.

Sam doesn't notice the silence until Dean reaches out and turns on the radio. Blues Traveller spills out of the speakers to fill the space inside his head that Sam had been crowding up with his circular lets out a long breath, the tension flowing out of him, and looks over at Dean.

Dean looks back at him and sighs, like they'd been having this whole conversation out loud. _Hunting, driving, good music. That's my idea of life._ "I just don't want to live it alone."

"Well, looks like you won't have to." Sam's reply is immediate. Involuntary. And because it's true, Sam doesn't – can't – stop the spread of a grin across his face.

Because _damn right_ it's true.


	3. Bugs and Home

_Chapter Summary:During their hunts in Oasis Plains and Lawrence, Sam and Dean interact with the families they're trying to save, with their own past, and with each other. Not always successfully._

Dean

"It's ironic," Sam says suddenly. He sounds a tad cautious. Not a sudden thought then, but something that's been on his mind for the last hundred miles or so until he worked up the courage to bring it up.

"What, man? That you're having conversations in your head for hours and then bam you include me in them when I have no fucking clue what we're talking about?" Dean retorts, screwing up his eyes against the slanting rays of the setting sun.

He's not quite sure where this conversation is going, but something tells him that he's not going to like it.

"You go on and on about how sticking with your family is the most important thing ever, like I did something wrong just by going to college, trying to live my own life," Sam explains, unperturbed, "but then this kid Matt's in trouble and you tell him to lie to his dad." For a moment, he pauses there, glances sideways at Dean who makes sure to keep his face blank. Then he plows on, "Why would you do that, if you believe in family so much?"

Yeah, Dean definitely doesn't like where this is going. "Missing Stanford, huh? Turning me into your study subject now?"

Sam shakes his head and sighs, exasperated. "All right, let's _not_ talk about this. Like we always do," he agrees gruffly. "It's just… it would have made me feel so much better, if I'd known this back then, when I was still at home, locked in an eternal argument with Dad."

"Known what?" Dean asks, despite himself. As soon as the words have left his mouth, he feels an irrationally strong impulse to bite down on his tongue.

"That you weren't Dad's man through and through. That you understood my point too."

Ah. This is where they were headed. Dean stares at his brother.

Illuminated by the last golden beads of light, Sam's face is gleaming with all the mystery and openness of a baby's. Dean's fingers are itching to touch it and to stroke away the lingering look of quiet wonder – none of this should surprise Sam and yet apparently it does.

It goes without saying that Dean has always been Sammy's man, through and through, but this is the last thing on earth he'd ever willingly admit. It's better if Sammy's not quite aware of just how absolutely Dean needs him, when Sam doesn't need him nearly as much in return and might just waltz off again at any given moment.

So Dean merely shrugs and says, "Yeah. A bit," while his thumb creeps along the steering wheel in the only soft, stealthy expression of sentiment that he'll ever allow himself.

He ignores the slightly disappointed way in which Sam bites his lip and squints at the road ahead.

Sam

Sam remembers being sixteen, scrawny and nerdy and an outsider, forever a stranger. The similarities between himself and that Matt kid had been ridiculous, over the top, and despite the uneasy truce between him and Dean these last few weeks, since the shifter, where neither of them mentions Stanford and they don't even argue about Dad, Sam can't help counseling the kid, telling him the things he wishes someone had told him. That it gets better. That before too long he'll be free to live his own life.

And when Dean calls him on it, damn right Sam takes the high road because what's Dean's go-to solution for all life's problems? To lie. To bend the rules to fit whatever situation he's landed himself in this week and then blow town, leave the locals in the dust believing a lie, to do it all again. So yeah it's ironic, how Dean touts family first, when the one thing Sam never, ever did was lie to Dad and Dean.

"You're a drone," he'd told Dean once. "You're like a Stormtrooper."

"Yeah, maybe," Dean had said, unconcerned, sighting down a shotgun he was cleaning. "'cept for how I hit what I aim at."

"You're drunk," he'd told Dad, nervous and determined one night when Dean was out late. "Dad, you need help. I want to help you. Please let me help."

Dad hadn't said anything.

Sam remembers the first time he almost hit his dad. He was sixteen and miserable, his bones too big for his body and his mind a blur, always a busy blur that wouldn't shut off. After spending the last two years sullen and silent and hiding behind his books, Dean had looked at this new version of his brother like he didn't know him, didn't know what to do with him, and that pissed Sam off worse than anything. And it was a night when Dad came home late, smelling of sulfur and whiskey and the order to pack up, that Sam raised his fist to his father and John had stood there like he would've let him throw the punch. Sam doesn't remember the fight that followed, just the way it had drained out of him when Dean shoved him bodily out the door of their rental and into the buggy night.

"You don't mean that, Sammy," Dean would say, late nights on park benches when Sam couldn't even be in the same room with Dad.

And Sam wouldn't say anything, because he wouldn't lie to Dean. But he meant it, whatever he'd said. He always did.

And so when Dean hits him with that line, accuses him of lying to Jessica, a lie of omission for not telling her who he really is – a phrase which Sam resents, by the way, because _who he is_ is not _this_, is not this life – yeah, it hurts. It's a low blow and Dean fucking knows it and Dean throws it at him anyway.

And he can't look at Dean for awhile, has to turn away, because he doesn't want to see that look on Dean's face, the one that lets Sam know Dean did it on purpose, said that to throw Sam off and derail the conversation he didn't want to have. He shouldn't let it get to him, shouldn't let it work, should step up and meet Dean halfway but dammit he's not a teenager anymore, he's grown out of thinking that the only solution to being hurt is to hurt back. Where had that ever gotten him before? Locked in an eternal shouting match with Dad, for one thing, just for daring to speak his mind.

No. He won't do that any more. It'd taken all of one fight with Jess, one fight when he lashed out because he didn't know another way, one fight where she stood her ground and didn't rise to his bait or sink to his level, to figure out that he had to change. Steady, that's Jess. That's how she was. And if Sam had never been able to tell her about some things, he balanced it out with never, ever lying to her. Not about who he was.

Sam bites his tongue before he asks Dean if he even knows what it's like to hear a woman say his _real_ name in bed. Stops himself because he doesn't fight that way anymore, and also because for all he really wants to smack his brother right now, he can't quite forget that, no matter what else is going on, Dean doesn't lie to him.

So he bundles up his jacket against the window and watches the moon-drenched country fly by as Dean puts as many miles between them and the Kansas state line as he can before the sun comes up.

Dean

"You always lie, do you know that?" Sam asks after their disastrous trip to Lawrence. Dean still can't quite believe that Sam managed to persuade him to return there.

This time, there's no frontlighting, but that doesn't make the plane of conversation they're traversing any less perilous.

It should be gratifying that Sam's begun to notice Dean, that he's no longer all wrapped up in his own selfish little bubble of dreams gone up in smoke and sulfur and passive-aggressive suffering. It would be – if it weren't so scary. Sammy's no longer the small, artless kid Dean can just drag around anywhere. He's sharp. He observes things, draws conclusions. He's beginning to ask the right questions. Even those that Dean doesn't dare to ask himself.

"We've already talked about this," Dean tries to brush him off. "You didn't tell Jessica, you didn't tell anybody. Lie of omission."

Sam's mouth twists. He's hurt. "In case you haven't noticed, I've tried to change. Because I blame myself, every day, for not telling Jess, for failing to warn her when there was still time… I think we should trust people. Tell them what's really going on. Then we'd be able to help them more easily."

Dean's eyebrows rise of their own accord. He's been doing this job for over twenty years now – and lying's always been part of it.

"Come on, man, you actually think that would work? Explanations take forever. They're messy. Dude, people are… _people_. A good lie gets the job done quicker and nobody gets hurt."

Sam refuses to back down. "You don't trust people."

"Back to analyzing me, really?" Dean scoffs, because damn Sam if he isn't getting good at this. "Man, find yourself somebody else for that psycho-crap."

"There's no one here besides you," Sam tries to joke with his most winning smile.

There's something incredibly enticing in his expression. Dean almost gives in. But he catches himself just in time and does the safest thing – lashes out. "There's always you, man. Analyze your Jessica-issues, why don't you?"

That definitely shuts Sam up. Neat. Effective. Even if something in Dean throbs dully at the sight of his little brother curling in on himself, turning away from him.

Of course, a geek like Sammy has to spot it straight away – how much Dean lies. Yeah, he lies to everybody. Fortunately, Sam's not quite smart enough to see how that includes him too. Dean hopes it stays that way. Because he wants to keep Sammy, as long as possible. To have him ride shotgun while Dean drives on and on, along a road that unfurls eternally before his eyes, even if that's just an optical illusion.

Eventually, the road will lead them to Dad and then it'll be goodbye and back to normality with Sammy. But for now, Dean keeps his eyes firmly trained on the horizon and the sheer endlessness of the passage before them.

Dean also lies to himself, yeah. Isn't that ironic, Sammy?


	4. Asylum and Scarecrow

_Chapter Summary: After six months on the road together, it's becoming more and more obvious that Sam and Dean aren't driving in the same direction._

Dean

Sam just wants to go and find Dad so he can tick a box and be done with it. Dean also wants to find Dad, but he doesn't mind if it takes a little longer. For him, there's no box waiting to be ticked, just their old lives, him and Dad hunting while Sam's away at college.

It's not like hunting with Sam. It means marching behind his notoriously unreliable father who might just abandon him again any time. It means stupidly following Dad's orders, never receiving so much as an appreciative glance for a job well done, never mind a word. Because Dad's thoughts, if he has any, will inevitably trail to absent little Sammy or to their eternally absent mother, never even sweeping over the living, breathing boy who's faithfully trotting along five feet behind him.

Which is why hunting with Sam feels like a holiday to Dean. It's good. It's fun. And like all the people who're far away from their everyday lives and worries, be it surfing in Malibu or skiing in Salt Lake City, Dean wishes it would never come to an end.

But of course it does.

One moment, Sam is pointing a gun at him, raging on about how Dean is this horribly perfect son who's always following Dad's orders while Sam's the only one sensible and brave enough to question them. The next, the spell's been broken and Sam no longer wishes to murder him, but Dean learns that, all the same, this is exactly what Sam thinks.

Following this, Sam's convinced they should just go to California and search for Dad, instead of looking into the mysterious disappearances of several couples like he wants them to.

Dean, meanwhile, would prefer to make the detour over to Indiana to prolong this sweet honeymoon of saving people and hunting things with Sammy always at his side. It's never been so easy to follow his father's orders.

Even if Sammy resents him for it.

But that's not all he does.

Dean can't believe it. Sam's actually leaving. The selfish bastard.

For the past six months, Dean's been all wrapped up in Sam. But then in one swift, sharp move, Sam severs all the hundreds of ways in which they've become inseparably connected and steps away. Just like that. It seems impossible. And yet it's happening.

Even after Sam's started walking away, Dean still can't believe that he's serious.

"Hey, I'm taking off, I will leave your ass, you hear me?" He's trying to sound threatening, but he's aware it comes out almost pleading.

"That's what I want you to do."

And there they are, back to where they were six months ago. Dean's eyes are prickling. He blinks, gets back into the car and takes off, leaves Sammy standing on that dark and empty road, a lonesome figure equipped with nothing more than a backpack, which shrinks away into nothingness in the reflection of the car's interior mirror as Dean drives away.

Dean can barely see the road ahead. He suspects that's not just because of the nocturnal darkness enveloping him and the Impala. Thank God and the FSM he has an order to follow blindly.

Sam

He turns back once just as Impala fades from sight, seeing not the last flicker of taillights but that final incredulous look on Dean's face as he waited for Sam to chicken out and get back in the car like a good little soldier. Like Dean would have for Dad, like Sam would have for Dean many years ago. He turns and starts back down the road, dwelling not on what had just happened but instead on a decade-old memory.

There was that time when Sam was twelve and mad at the world and Dad had picked him up from school with the announcement that they were cutting town again. He'd thrown himself out of the car at a busy intersection while Dad waited for the light to change. Dean had long since graduated to sitting in the front seat with Dad and Sam had seen him lunge for his own door handle but the light was green and the car was already speeding away.

Sam stood on the corner with angry, panicked tears gathering behind his eyes.

Dean found him all of half an hour later, hiding in the stacks of the local library where he'd been spending most of his time recently, researching a school paper on the civil war. He sat on the floor with a book open on his knees, fomenting rebellion in his mind.

_Despite the South's desire to call it a War Between the States, it was a civil war. Thousands of southerners fought for the Union, and thousands of northerners fought for the Confederacy — father against son, brother against brother, for the war divided families as well as states. To justify the mad things they were doing, both sides learned to live with paradox. Both armies sang a war song called 'Battle Cry of Freedom' to the same music, but with different words._

"Sammy." Dean stood at the end of the row, looking down at him. When he was sitting was the only time Dean got to look down at him anymore, Sam thought with a grim smile hidden in the turn of a page. Dean raised his voice and called to him again, ignoring a passing librarian who shushed him harshly.

"Go away, Dean."

Dean stalked towards him, reaching down to gather a handful of Sam's shirt and try to tug him up. "Get _up_, Sam. Dad gave me ten minutes to get you back to the car before he takes off."

Sam snorted, making himself as heavy as possible and turning another page, pretending to keep reading. "I don't care. I _want_ him to go." Dad wouldn't leave without Dean, anyway.

"Sammy, we've got exactly no time for this. We have to be in Ohio before sundown to stop a massacre. Okay? We've got lives to save. Whatever issues you have to work out, you do it in the car while we drive."

Sam glared up at him finally, guilt burning in his chest. "You're just going to leave me in a motel room when we get there, anyway. At least here we have an apartment, why can't I just stay?Dad doesn't even want me along!"

"Well _I_ do!" Dean burst out, angry and too-loud. He ran his hands through his hair, a leftover gesture from before he sheared his hair down short like Dad's. Sam had ducked away from the clippers Dad brandished at him when he finished with Dean, keeping his own hair stubbornly long. "Come on, Sammy, just… get up. Please."

Sam glared up at his brother until the same hard-faced librarian returned. "I'm going to have to ask you boys to leave."

Sam was up on his feet and apologizing without meaning to do it, falling silent mid-sentence when he caught sight of the disbelief on Dean's face as he looked between Sam and the librarian who'd succeeded where Dean had failed. Dean put his hand on Sam's shoulder and pushed him along in front of him, out of the stacks, towards the front door. Sam forgot that he was still holding _What The War Made Us_ until they passed through the gates on either side of the door and the escaping book alarm began to sound.

"Oh for f…" Dean muttered a few choice words he only ever said out of Dad's earshot before grabbing Sam by the hand and breaking into a sprint.

The car was idling at the end of the block and the brothers tumbled into the back seat together. Dad shifted into gear and pulled out into traffic without a word or a second glance in the rearview mirror. He never commented on the episode, and Sam kept hold of that stolen library book for as long as he'd ever held on to anything in his life until it was pitched to make room for the crossbow Dad gave Sam on his fifteenth birthday.

o0o

Old memories can't hold his attention forever. The moon continues to rise, which is great he supposes because it's dark as hell out here and he's not going to be any use helping Dad if he knocks himself out running into a tree, but on the other hand as the night grows brighter it seems to illuminate all the other things he's trying to leave behind him. Dean's stupid face, pale in the moonlight, looking at him like he was the biggest waste of space imaginable. _Goodbye, Sam._

That morning had been the first time he'd heard his father's voice in… God, could it really have been three years? After what Dean had said, that Dad would hang out around Stanford, keeping an eye on him, had it been stupid to assume that if he could just talk to Dad, he would get through to him, convince him to listen, to let them help? Sam kicks a rock and watches it skitter down the road in front of him, ignoring the slight pain in his toe. _I would have done anything to protect you from that_, Dad had said. So maybe Sam would have got through to him, made that connection he so desperately needed. But Dean had grabbed the phone away from him, taking charge for a second before buckling and submitting to Dad again. Just like always. Sam hadn't quite remembered what that felt like, hadn't seen that side of Dean since they got back together. But the experience is painfully familiar. Dean acting like he can do anything, like he's on Sam's side, and knuckling under the second it comes down to actually making a stand against Dad.

So now here they are. Dean jetting off to battle a scary couples-eating monster while Sam plods toward the man who won't even take their calls. But Sam doesn't need to question himself on this one. There is no question who's got the moral high ground, this time; Dad could have called anyone to look into the business in Indiana, and Sam has the same right to go after Jessica's killer as Dad does. He thinks that if he can get to Dad, if he can help him, Dad will figure out what Dean seems to willfully blind to. That Dad and Sam have something in common, now. They are both bound by a need for revenge.

He knows what Dean would say to that, if Dean had the guts for it. _Dad lost his wife, Sammy, his kids' mom. Yeah, it sucks, but your little college girlfriend isn't exactly on a level with that._ And then Sam would have to hit back with the facts that he'd been keeping to himself, planned to keep on keeping to himself. The way he'd taken to slowing down while passing by the jewelry counter at the mall, how he and Jess had agreed on Natalie and Anabelle for girls but couldn't come up with a single boy's name they both liked, then agreed they'd rather have daughters, anyway. _Tons of them_, Sam had laughed into the warm skin of Jessica's neck. _A big flock of them_. Jess had been a lonely only child, always longing for a sister.

It's cold for the second week in April and Sam tries to pick up his pace to keep warm, but his legs feel like lead beneath him. He has no idea how far back it was to the last town they passed through. So he hunches his shoulders against the ache of his heavy pack, and keeps walking.

There are reasons Sam keeps all this stuff about Jess to himself. For one thing, Dean wouldn't believe him. And Sam doesn't want to end up defending what Dean would call his domestic fairytale crap – doesn't think he could, not convincingly, when honestly the memory of what that all felt like is fading so quickly. Some days he feels like it's nothing but the guilt that keeps him going; the feeling of guilt was more real, more present, than love. But then there are flashes, moments so rare and precious he doesn't hold on to them too tightly for fear of squeezing them dry, having them crumble into dust in his clenched fists and scatter in the wind, lost forever. Like when Lori tried to kiss him and for just a moment he could smell Jessica, remember what it felt like having someone there to share everything with. A best friend and partner in a way Dean isn't. Can't, won't be.

He hears the sound of an approaching truck and steps to the side of the road, shielding his eyes against headlights and lifting his hand. The driver doesn't even slow down.

"What the hell am I doing here?" Sam asks the night air, exhaustion and righteous anger burning in his chest, his breath rising in foggy puffs in front of his face, blurring his vision.

_It's called being a good son,_ Dean's voice mocked him.

He turns to look back the way he'd come, throwing his arms wide and flinging the words after Dean, sending his anger to follow him down the road like a vengeful spirit. "What about being a good brother, Dean, huh?" He kicks at another rock, a much bigger one, and howls in rage and frustration as pain shoots up the length of his leg. Stumbling off the road he drops his pack and collapses onto the low fence running alongside the road.

His anger vanishing like morning mist, he unlaces his boot and inspects his toes. Nothing broken, thank God, though he'd walked far enough on broken toes before to know it wasn't that bad, certainly not the most pain he'd ever been in. He lets out a long, frosty breath, and hunches deeper into his jacket, waiting for the sun to rise.

Dean

Burkitsville, Indiana. The whole town's disgusting, a den of selfishness and lies. Dean is suddenly glad that Sam's not with him.

The anger, the hurt, the disappointment, all melt away, meaningless, and what remains is a strange sense of thankfulness for the good times they've had. It allows him to pick up his mobile and call Sammy, who's out there, on his own, somewhere on the way to California.

It's good to hear his brother's voice. It's good to hear he's doing okay. Not that Dean doubts it, not really. Occasionally, he just needs to remind himself that Sam's no longer the tiny, helpless baby that would die if Dean weren't there to carry him out of a cursed, burning house.

There's a lot that he wants to say, but he's lost for words. Emotions, apologies, all that… none of it has ever come to him easily. "Actually, uh – I want you to know…I mean, don't think…" Possibly, that might still have been an understatement.

"_Yeah. I'm sorry, too._" Bless Sammy. He knows how to talk where Dean can only stammer. And better still, he can even interpret Dean's incoherent stutters.

Dean braces himself and makes a new attempt at getting out all the words he'll regret having swallowed if he doesn't say them now. "Sam. You were right. You've got to do your own thing. You've got to live your own life."

_"Are you serious?_"

It's a little easier now, so Dean ploughs on. The words almost tumble out of his mouth, one after one, after having sat somewhere within his chest for ages, waiting to spring outside. "You've always known what you want. And you go after it. You stand up to Dad. And you always have. Hell, I wish I – anyway. I admire that about you. I'm proud of you, Sammy."

_"I don't even know what to say."_ For once it's Sammy who's left speechless. And not because Dean actively tried to shut him up. Probably he should have said all that much sooner. Well. He's a selfish bastard too, isn't he?

Dean swallows. "Say you'll take care of yourself." He doesn't add, _Especially when I won't be around anymore to do the job._

_"I will._"

Instead, he terminates the call with a small lie. After all the truths he's squeezed out of himself, one little lie seems to carry no weight. "Call me when you find Dad."

_"Okay. Bye, Dean._"

Dear, dear Sammy. Dean stares at the phone in his hand. It's a bit like that terrible day when Sam went off to Stanford, except that maybe this time Dean didn't say all the wrong things. At least this once they've had a proper goodbye. Thank fuck for that.

He pockets his phone and heads inside the library.

o0o

Suddenly, Sam's there. The fact that he came back is almost better than the escape from certain death, though that's pretty cool too. Dean doesn't need to be sliced to pieces by a possessed scarecrow if he can help it.

Maybe Sam will leave again, one day, but for now he's there, and, most importantly, on his own terms. Although those don't really seem to be all that different from Dean's, once you look at them.

"I still want to find Dad. And you're still a pain in the ass. But, Jess and Mom – they're both gone. Dad is God knows where. You and me. We're all that's left. So, if we're going to see this through, we're going to do it together."

Dean stares at him, afraid to say anything lest his heart, which seems to have dislocated itself and climbed up his throat, thrumming fast, should jump out of his mouth as soon as he opens it. He's not good at this thing. Being moved. Being happy.

So he stays silent for a second longer and then makes an exaggerated show of being close to tears that wouldn't be out of place in your average telenovela. "Hold me, Sam. That was beautiful."

He reaches for Sam's shoulder. Sam, who's not fooled for a second, bats his hand away. They both start laughing. And in the middle of Sam's ridiculously young, laughing face, there's an utterly generous, boundless display of understanding that makes Dean feel for the first time that they're not just driving away from their old lives, in a vain attempt to stop time, but towards something new and infinitely brighter.


End file.
